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Buy from us with a golden curl, for "The Goblin Market"

Author Related author Christina Georgina Rossetti British
1861–62
Not on view
In August 1861, Rossetti proposed to the publisher Alexander Macmillan that he create a "brotherly design for a frontispiece" to a volume of poems by his sister Christina. The drawing was finished by mid-December but it took until April 1862 Charles Faulkner's related wood engraving to be completed and published. The fairytale-like imagery echoes the related verse, which tells how goblins offer two sisters magic fruit, a food that symbolizes temptation. The artist shows the plainly dressed Lizzie walking uphill at upper right as Laura, in a patterned gown, kneels in the foreground and clips a lock of her luxurious hair to pay the animal-headed goblins crowded at left. The poem dramatically details how Laura's subsequent cravings bring her close to death, and how Lizzie's resistance enables her to confront the goblins and save her sister.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Buy from us with a golden curl, for "The Goblin Market"
  • Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, London 1828–1882 Birchington-on-Sea)
  • Author: Related author Christina Georgina Rossetti (British, London 1830–1894 London)
  • Date: 1861–62
  • Medium: Pen and black and dark brown ink
  • Dimensions: Sheet: 4 1/2 × 3 13/16 in. (11.4 × 9.7 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2020
  • Object Number: 2021.16.12
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

More Artwork

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St. Cecily / Cecilia (related to illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
St. Cecily / Cecilia (related to illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
St. Cecily / Cecilia (Illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Wood engraving
St. Cecily / Cecilia (Illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dalziel Brothers
1857–1903
Mythic Uther's Deeply Wounded Son (King Arthur and the Weeping Queens) (Illustration for "The Palace of Art" in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
Mythic Uther's Deeply Wounded Son (King Arthur and the Weeping Queens) (Illustration for "The Palace of Art" in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
Mariana in the South (related to illustration for "The Palace of Art," Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
Mariana in the South (related to illustration for "The Palace of Art," Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
Sir Galahad (from Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Wood engraving
Sir Galahad (from Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
William James Linton
1857–1903

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